


Horseshoe Nail

by Jedi Buttercup (jedibuttercup)



Category: Push (2009)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, What-If, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-27
Updated: 2009-02-27
Packaged: 2017-10-05 12:18:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/41660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedibuttercup/pseuds/Jedi%20Buttercup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>This can't be right</i>, Nick thought, syringe falling from his fingers as tongues of fire spread up through his veins.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Horseshoe Nail

**Author's Note:**

> What if it hadn't been soy sauce? Title is a reference to the famous proverb.

_This can't be right_, Nick thought, syringe falling from his fingers as tongues of fire spread up through his veins. _What the hell? I know I had all our plans Wiped so the other Watcher couldn't follow us, but this is crazy! How is committing suicide supposed to help us?_

Because as far as he could tell, that was exactly what he'd done. He sank to his knees, clapping a hand over the pinprick wound as the feigned drama he'd thought he'd engineered became all too real. Had the harmless syringe he'd gone there expecting been swapped out by someone else? Or maybe the original switch he'd assumed he'd sent Hook for had fallen through? Had the Wiper betrayed him-- or had a Pusher got to one of them?

Not that it mattered now, whichever way the cookie crumbled. A quick poison might be kinder than the contents of the original syringe-- the lost Division drug that had outright murdered thousands of psychics in the oppressive organization's experiments. Kira had been the only one ever to survive it, and even then, its side effects had nearly been the death of her before Nick had turned her over to Carver to complete her treatment.

So much for trading the drug for Cassie's mother. Had Mama Holmes, legendary Watcher that she was supposed to be, seen this coming too? He'd always known their odds were long, but he really didn't see any way out of this one.

"Kira..." he gritted out, seeking out his sometime girlfriend's face as his muscles spasmed and he collapsed to the floor. Nick could feel his heartbeat speeding up in his chest, and his breath coming more quickly; he didn't know how long the drug would take to kill him, but he knew it couldn't be long. He scrabbled at the slick surface beneath his fingertips, struggling vainly for some kind of purchase on the slow slide toward unconsciousness, but there were no miracles to be found there, nor in Kira's impassive gaze. She returned his desperate glance with a blank, incurious aloofness, flanking Carver like the good little Division automaton she'd been reprogrammed into.

It was a good thing Cassie wasn't there, too. She would be so disappointed in him.

His kinetic sense was the next thing to go; it might have been years since he'd Moved anything on a regular basis, but he'd never been without that extra sense, the ability to hear the frequency vibrations given off by the matter all around him. The lack of it disoriented him worse than any drugs or alcohol ever could, and he squeezed his eyes shut, trying to keep the dizziness from making the fire in his veins hurt even worse.

"What a waste," he thought he heard Carver say next, the words Dopplered into a blur of sound.

Then, between one heartbeat and the next, the world abruptly went out.

Nothing. No sound, no sense, for one brief, eternal moment. _Peace_. He floated in the blackness, feeling strangely as though he'd been wrapped warm cotton wool, until--

Water? Nick blinked, gasping air into aching, emptied lungs, as another drop of something splashed, cold and wet, into his face. Hadn't someone told him to bring an umbrella? Wasn't there something he should be doing?

...Why was he flat on his back, anyway?

He reached out, stretching his _other_ tactile sense as he habitually did upon waking. He'd just been thinking of an umbrella, and sure enough, there was one very close by; surely no more than a few feet away from him. He opened his eyes, ready to tug it toward himself-- then frowned, as the landscape his extrasensory perception told him to expect refused to align with what his normal senses were perceiving.

There was no umbrella nearby, no one standing by to hold it over him. Instead, he saw two pairs of legs moving away from him, attached to people he'd recognize anywhere; Carver, it had to be, and it looked like Kira walking beside him. Nick hadn't even realized they were there. They felt so _close_, as close as his own skin, close enough that he'd filed their combined signature as a bed partner's without a conscious thought. The umbrella felt farther out somehow, yet still near enough to call to hand; he didn't know what to make of it. And beyond that--

Nick groaned as the kinetic signature of the entire building crashed into him, bringing memory with it. He could feel it, he could feel the _whole thing_ light as a feather in his mind; he'd never been able to grasp anything so _big_ before. Cassie hadn't been lying when she'd said what the drug was meant to do.

Amazed, he flexed the raw power rushing through his mind. The building _shook_ as though an earthquake had struck it, the entire structure reacting to his touch. He sat up, then climbed unevenly to his feet, grinning in shocked disbelief; he felt almost _drunk_, and suddenly Kira's mercurial behavior before she'd got so sick made a little more sense. He could Move _anything_ now, he could feel it; and no other Mover alive could hope to stop him.

Carver turned at the sound of Nick's movements, pupils blowing wide as he watched him rise from the floor. "_Impossible_."

"I don't think so," Nick laughed, jerking the agent right off his feet with a crook of his fingers. No way was he going to let the agent Push him _now_. He focused on the man's body in his mind, listening as every scrap of cloth he was wearing, every item in his pockets, every square inch of his skin sang with their individual microscopic voices; he didn't even have to concentrate to hear them. It was glorious; it was almost too much, and Nick frowned as he remembered-- again-- that the drug was only the first half of the process intended to augment a psychic's gifts. Lucky thing they had a Sniff on their side; he'd have to have her hunt down where Carver had left the rest of the medications he'd used to treat Kira.

That settled, Nick swept his arm across his body and watched the man who'd killed his father sail out through the broken window. "Push _that_, you bastard!" he called out after him as he fell.

"Yes, why don't you," Kira growled, stepping in front of him.

Okay, so maybe he'd have to find that note he'd left Kira first; surely he'd planned a way to bring her back from this? Nick braced himself, trying to fight off the sudden compulsion to Move, but her mind was like a dark wave, cresting high, poised to sweep him under.

Before it could break, however, a younger voice screamed in denial behind her. Nick blinked, then jerked his gaze away as a colorful plastic handle struck the side of Kira's head. She slumped to the floor with a stunned expression as he staggered backward, dizzied again with relief.

"This wasn't supposed to happen. Nick, _what did you do?_" Cassie asked, face pale with shock as she stood over the older psychic's fallen form.

"What did _I_ do?" Nick replied, snorting incredulously.

"You _killed_ him!" the young Watcher continued as though he hadn't spoken. Her eyes seemed to bore right into him-- no, _through him_, Nick realized as her eyelids began to flutter. She dropped the umbrella, then lifted a hand, pressing it against her forehead as if to trap the vision behind it.

"You killed him," she repeated-- but there was a lighter note in her voice that hadn't been there before, and a smile dawned on her face, wide and just a little off-kilter. "The future's changing," she continued, breathlessly. "Everything's different!"

It took a second for that to sink in, but when it did, he chuckled, grinning crookedly at her. "Told you I wouldn't let you die," he teased her.

"Not me, not you, not her, just them!" Cassie dropped the umbrella and spun in a circle next to Kira, clutching her drawing book tightly to her chest.

Water continued to trickle downward as she twirled, making fractal patterns on Nick's shirt; around them, wreckage shifted and bodies sprawled, cooling. "Just Division?" he had to clarify.

"Just Division," Cassie confirmed, laughing wildly. "We're going to kill them _all_."

Nick glanced around at the carnage he'd created, and believed her.

\---


End file.
